The Joe Rogan Effect
Joe Rogan helped "The Terminal List" go parabolic.
I am a huge fan of military thrillers and one favorite series of all time is the James Reece series by Jack Carr. Carr dropped The Terminal List, the first book in the series, in 2018.
In April 2020, Carr first went on the Joe Rogan show. At that point, Carr had released The Terminal List, True Believer, and had just dropped Savage Son.
These books had done well, but in this interview, Carr recounted what happened afterwards:
JC: The first novel, The Terminal List, sold out everywhere almost immediately, which is crazy! I think it was sold out on Amazon for almost two months. My third novel, Savage Son, had recently come out and had already made the New York Times bestsellers list in the hardback fiction and combined fiction categories, but as soon as I was on Rogan both The Terminal List and Savage Son hit the New York Times audiobook bestsellers list, which was amazing. I can’t thank Joe enough for having me on.
Looking at Google Trends, we can see the Joe Rogan effect. Each spike corresponds with Carr's two appearances on the JRE: the first was in April 2020 and the second was a year later in April 2021.
It seems that sometimes the best advertising is no advertising.